Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/103

 Man must raise himself up to the level of woman's chastity, and not woman lower herself to the looseness of man, as the case is at the present time.

Chastity, if sexual intercourse be permitted under certain conditions (marriage), is not chastity. Love, if resistance to evil be permitted, is not love.

It was not love of women that gave me the brightest period of my life, but love for people, for children.

Morality cannot be prescribed. A moral and good life flows from the religious, metaphysical understanding of life. As always, no aim can be reached by direct striving after it, but always in conjunction with striving after some higher aim. So it is in this case: the consciousness of one's participation in the Deity inevitably leads one to a moral life, to moral acts, and to abstaining from immoral ones.